Re: Question for Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Tue, 21 Jan 1997 15:15:52 -0100 

My dear Mrs Lubell,

  They are hard questions that you ask me!  I suppose
I was prompted to write a book about the French
Revolution because of my growing fear that there
might be an English one, too.  As a younger man, I had
been little daunted by such a prospect.  The clean
air of republicanism was something I longed to inhale.
I think it must have been my first visit to America, in
1842, which made me question whether it was quite so
bracing and healthy as I'd allowed myself to imagine.
  Whatever my doubts about republican solutions, though,
the 1850's were not a decade to encourage complacency
about our British institutions.  Never forget the wicked
mismanagement of the war in the Crimea.  I never can and
never shall.
  One thing the war achieved, though, was a greater
respect in British hearts for the French people, our
allies in that conflict.  Perhaps this inspired us to
think more about their history.  When your students read
my book, I hope they will see my sympathy for the
suffering people of France, as well as my abhorrence of
the cruelties they perpetrated.  In writing "A Tale of Two
Cities" I was warning my countrymen, "Take heed, lest we
follow the same road, to the same destination."  "We must
change our ways," I was saying, "before we are ruined by them."
  It is never easy to discern how books spring from the man
who wrote them.  The man himself is probably among the least
qualified to do so.  But I think I can detect things in
"A Tale of Two Cities," mirroring my own life at the time.  I
wrote the book in 1859, the year after I separated from my
wife Catherine, to who I had been married for many unhappy
years.  The predicament of Dr Manette, "recalled to life"
after being "buried alive," metaphorically resembles my own
at the time.  Lucie Manette resembles a young woman I had but
recently met, who made me seee what was missing in my life.
The sacrifice of Sydney Carton echoes the sacrifice of Richard
Wardour, a character I acted in a play called "The Frozen Deep."
But I do not think there was anything in my life equivalent to
the laying down of it for a friend.

Faithfully yours,



Charles Dickens
________________________________________________________________________________
  >Dear Mr. Dickens:
>    My students are beginning TALE OF TWO CITIES as their first foray into
>reading one of your books.  What advice can you give them?  In particular,
>can you tell them what caused you to write a book about the French
>Revolution?.  What in your life relates to the events/characters/issues
>addressed in the book?
>
>Marcia Lubell
>
>

======================
Charles Dickens
charles_dickens@rmplc.co.uk
Author